Chief Ottar Snaekolsson Gunn never existed

​Mark Rugg Gunn in his Gunn history pages 31-32 gives detail of an Ottar Snaekolsson who went to Bergen in Norway to visit the King ‘concerning their needs’; by implication it is meant to prove that ‘Chief’ Snaekoll Gunnison married and had children. It does no such thing. Why? For many reasons but the simplest is -

1) We know when ‘Chief’ Snaekoll Gunnison was born – around the year 1200 - as his mother’s first husband Litolf Baldpate died at the battle of Clairdon in 1198.

2) Mark Rugg Gunn does not mention a date for the visit to Norway by Ottar Snaekolsson. Oops.

3) The visit to Norway happened in 1224 and there are many references for this date. For example one of these references says ‘1224, Hakon’s Saga relates how, while King Hakon was in Bergen, Gilliecrist and Ottar, Snaekoll’s son, and many Hebrideans, came to meet him there from west beyond the sea; and they had many letters concerning the needs of their lands’ Page 88, R. Andrew McDonald, The Kingdom of the Isles Scotland’s Western Seaboard c. 1100 – c. 1336

So the only offered ‘proof’ for the existence of Ottar Snaekolsson (Gunn) fails at the first test as no-one would be sending an approximately four year old over the seas to Norway to discuss state matters with a King (and without his parents) and about four is all Ottar Snaekolsson (Gunn) could have been. And the ship which went to Bergen was a ship from the Hebrides – and an Ottar Snaekolsson is a well known Sudreyan Chief in Western Scotland in the 1220s . So, would one be sending a significant Chief to discuss matters with the Norwegian King or would one send an unaccompanied four year old?